


A Pair of Traitors

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Love/Hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On their flight south, Jaime falls ill and Sansa decides to care for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pair of Traitors

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the gameofshipschallenges Ships of Ice and Fire winter tropes challenge.

“You should leave me,” Jaime says, feverishly swatting at the rag Sansa removes from his brow. “You’d be better off.”

“Would I now?” she asks, putting aside the warm rag and reaching for a new one.

Not better off precisely, since her skills need the complement of his to be entirely safe on the road, but at least if she abandoned him, she wouldn’t be trapped in this wretched room bought with their last coin that smells of the stink of other travelers and Jaime’s sweat and sick.

“Yes, dammit,” he speaks through gritted teeth.

Sansa dips the linen in her small dish of cool water, wetting it. “You must be feeling better to want to play the tragic hero, sacrificing yourself for my benefit. You haven’t been so bent on honor since we left the Vale.” All trappings of honor were left behind one night in a bedroll with her legs wrapped around his hips and his sister’s name hissed through his perfect white teeth.

“Better? Don’t be a bloody fool. I’m not going to recover. You’ll bury me here in these sands.”

He might not be wrong given his condition. His little monologue has clearly worn him out, as he breathes heavily and watches her movements through hooded eyes. But Sansa has no intention of giving up yet.

“Not if I help you,” she says, frowning at his feeble attempts to throw her off, as she wrings out the new piece of linen and folds it over his creased brow. “Stop fussing, please.”

She’d rather not care for him. Taking care of him only makes the pull in her stomach worse, when she looks at his sleeping visage, the lines all smoothed out and the gold of his hair only somewhat peppered with grey. It triggers the part of her that wants to love and pet and sooth. That’s the part of her that’s every bit the traitor Joffrey labeled her, except it’s not traitorous to the Lannisters, it’s traitorous to who she should be.

“Leave me to die.”

She presses her hand over the linen, adhering it to his burning skin. “No.”

“You have it in you, sweet Kingslayer.”

He insists on believing she killed Joffrey and doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by it, despite the fact that everyone says Joffrey was his son. She could convince him that it wasn’t her doing, Petyr taught her how to be very convincing, especially when it comes to convincing men, but she found that she likes bearing the blame. It feels rather like its own kind of crown. But the title of murderer isn’t one she truly has earned. She is still yet innocent of that crime, although guilty of others. For when it came down to dispatching Petyr, she was relieved that Jaime delivered the killing blow even though she’d imagined doing it herself more than once.

“Given my crimes, it would be fitting if you killed me, shewolf.”

No doubt his crimes far outweigh hers, but she has no wish to know their count. “I feel as if you want to confess something, and I won’t let you,” she says with a scowl. “I’m no septa, no silent sister to unburden yourself to, do you hear? I have need of you and I’d rather not hate you more than I already do.” Already there is hate and love and need mixed in a bitter stew she grew familiar with long before Jaime rescued her from Petyr’s grasp. That is the only type of love she knows, though she dreamed of something different once, something fine and dear.

“You don’t have need of me. You’re as slippery as an eel.”

“An eel?”

“You’ll find your way home.”

They’re not headed home, they’re headed south, but Jaime may have forgotten that in his illness. To the north lie monsters and a descending wall of snow that might bury them all, no matter how far they flee, but having already passed through the land where dragons now rule, most of those dangers lie behind them. Disease is now their primary concern. Disease stalks this land, but at least it is not the greyscale that infects her protector. If it was, she would have no choice but to leave him, and it would hurt her more than she cares to admit.

“I didn’t know eels were like homing pigeons, ser.”

He grimaces and coughs, turning his head to the side as his face turns a brighter shade of red.

“Stop being smart,” he rasps, and she reaches for the cup of honeyed wine to sooth the raw ache he complains of as he claws at his throat with ragged fingernails and a stump.

If he recovers—and he must—they will cross the waters to go where no one will know them. She will depend on Jaime’s protection until it is safe enough to announce herself to the only brother left to her, the one who fights in the north. If the dragons in the south consume him, however, she will need to stay abroad, perhaps forever. Either way, she has need of the Kingslayer. Jaime’s drive to fulfill his vow to her mother has proved eminently useful thus far, and she would rather continue to rely on him than go to the trouble of finding another man to bend to her will. With her luck, she’d fall in love again with yet another man who can’t love her back. That always seems to be the way of it. They either want your land or your title or they want you to be someone else. At least with Jaime, it’s only the latter. He’s happiest in the dark, when she rakes her nails down his back. So is she. Shewolf indeed.

“There,” she says, as he sips as slowly as a weakened child. Her cousin Robert was nothing like this at the end—almost too weak to complain, but terrified that she might leave his side—so it must mean there is some fight left in him. “You only have need of some rest and you’ll be as right as rain in no time.”

“Do me the favor of leaving me to die,” he says, letting his eyes slipped closed.

Part of her wants to sneer,  _You’d like that, wouldn’t you?_  He’d slip his vow and not be forced any longer to face the one misstep he made, the one misstep in a lifetime of being true only to his sister, brought on by a too capable mummer and a girl as lonely as himself. She made him a traitor too in that bedroll. He thinks them both king slayers, but it’s something more intimate they have in common. So instead she smiles and dabs his lips. “I’m not letting you off so easily, ser.”

 


End file.
